Suspected Qaeda Operative Tries to Quash Rights Waiver

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/16/nyregion/man-charged-in-bomb-plot-seeks-to-toss-rights-waiver.html

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A man accused of being a Qaeda operative who was flown to New York to face trial last year after being seized by United States commandos in Libya testified on Wednesday that he believed he was being taken to the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and also said he felt he had “no choice” but to sign a form waiving his rights.

The testimony by the alleged operative, Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, 50, appears to conflict with the government’s position that he knowingly and voluntarily waived his rights before being questioned aboard the aircraft by law enforcement personnel.

Mr. Ruqai testified at a suppression hearing in Federal District Court in Manhattan, where he faces trial next month on charges that he conspired in the 1998 bombings of two United States embassies in East Africa, in which 224 people were killed.

He has pleaded not guilty. His capture in Tripoli was sharply criticized by the Libyan government as the “kidnapping of a Libyan citizen.”

Mr. Ruqai, speaking through an Arabic interpreter, testified that he had asked for a lawyer aboard the plane, and had also told the authorities that he was on a hunger strike. One of his interrogators, George F. Corey Jr., an investigator with the United States attorney’s office, testified that Mr. Ruqai had not accepted offers of food during the flight and had received fluids through an intravenous tube.

Mr. Ruqai, asked by his lawyer where he believed he was being flown, responded: “I did not know. I thought that it was Guantánamo.”

Federal prosecutors have said Mr. Ruqai, after waiving his rights, made an incriminating statement. His lawyer, Bernard V. Kleinman, has asked the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, to suppress the statement, arguing in a court filing that Mr. Ruqai had undergone “countless hours of abusive interrogation” by the Central Intelligence Agency before being questioned for law enforcement purposes, leaving him confused and vulnerable to being pressured into waiving his rights.

Mr. Ruqai, in a separate filing, said that by the time law enforcement authorities questioned him, his ability to make a voluntary decision “was long since gone.”

The hearing on Wednesday focused only on the period after Mr. Ruqai, whose nom de guerre is Abu Anas al-Libi, was handed over to law enforcement authorities and not the questioning for intelligence purposes before that.

The government has said the sessions were kept distinct and took place at least 22 hours apart. Mr. Corey testified that after learning he would be involved in the questioning, he took steps like setting up email filters so that he “could not accidentally receive any emails” from people “involved with the intelligence portion” of the case.

A prosecutor, Adam Fee, introduced a copy of the advice-of-rights form that Mr. Ruqai signed, which said statements he had previously made “will not be usable” against him. “We don’t care what you said to anyone in the past,” the form says. “We are starting anew.”

Mr. Corey said that when Mr. Ruqai signed the form, he asked if Mr. Corey would be interrogating him. Mr. Corey said yes, “but I explained to him that I think my definition of interrogation and yours might be very different.”

“I would not be yelling,” Mr. Corey said. “I would not be threatening him. I would not be raising my voice.” Mr. Corey said he told Mr. Ruqai “this would be a conversation between two men, and if he had any problems and he wanted to stop that he could.”

“He said he understood,” Mr. Corey added.

Mr. Ruqai, under questioning by his lawyer, said he had been arrested before in Libya and found no difference between his treatment there and in the United States. “Here, at least, they have the dignity not to hit me and extend their hand against me,” he said.

Asked about signing the waiver, Mr. Ruqai said, “You have no choice.” But he acknowledged under cross-examination that he understood he had certain rights, like the right to a lawyer.

“Yeah, and I should not talk unless with the presence of a lawyer,” he added.

The judge has not yet ruled.